


Little Death Knell

by orphan_account



Series: Yakuza Stories. [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe-1960’s, An Emphasis on Taisho and Showa Era History, Gambling Hall, Kabuki Theatre, M/M, Murder, Period Typical Attitudes, Slow Updates, Taisho-centric history, Violence, Worldbuilding, Yakuza
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 03:58:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16590425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: 1964.Akaashi Keiji reenters his life as a criminal. It's not by choice, but there's no backing out now.





	Little Death Knell

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.
> 
> Yep, that’s a reference to the infamous quote “I am become death.”

Saitama welcomed his return with snow evenly fallen on bare trees. Strangers passed Kuroo in numb disillusion. The cold pressed around the gun in the lining of his tailored coat with the intent of proving a point. He hoped beyond reason he understood the chill’s meaning before his destination swept him up in a velvet night.

Of course, the theatre tricked the eye with its mimicry of an eternal paradise. A sheer backdrop of violent evergreen spilled across the low roof trickling over feathery doors, painted the identical shade of Akaashi’s eyes. Kuroo swore himself from thinking on that name until the young man appeared before him. He peeked through the slotted wood of an open window, soft to the touch. Men milled about in the shadowed glow of the corridor, clad in willowy work clothes, almost disappearing as they adjusted the great garments of Kabuki actors, divas parading into them as though they deemed their presence a vile affront. Stifling the bitter tang rising in his throat and with it the urge to smear the perfection of their painted faces, Kuroo flattened a dampened palm on the cool wood of the door.

Clenching one hand around the faint outline of the gun, he watched the servants scurrying past with no regard to the strange man inspecting them, a calculated hostility shrewd in his gaze. In preparation for the sweeping performance set to begin in minutes, they beat the brocaded tapestries adorning the pale wallpaper free of dust mites, snuck enchantedly painted playbills into every newcomer’s hand. Kuroo allowed himself a tight smirk as a frowning servant sliced a playbill between his fingers before hurrying off. He alone endeavoured to think on the expense of the young man behind the mindbending painting, the detail of the attire and landscape of the actors a feat of mathematics beyond human comprehension.

He followed a young couple whispering tender nothings and a wizened old man into the playful darkness of the theatre. Buzzing with flighty chatter, nonsensical tangents rolled over his head. Sitting in a neglected patch of night, he collected himself in the farthest seat on the right side. Dimming, the lights hushed all tittering stirring through the theater, and went out.

They came up on the loveliest young man Kuroo had yet seen. Akaashi was a vision in period clothing.

His hand fastened around the gun, Kuroo scraped himself up and staggered from his seat, dripping into the bleeding light falling across the empty aisle. He watched Akaashi’s eyes slide with a practised discernment over the audience, as though aware of the spell he laboured in conjuring. They fell on Kuroo as he knew they would: his mouth a flagrant betrayal of beauty, damning and open, eyes swimming with a forgotten worry now no longer a memory, Akaashi gathered his muted winter garments around himself before plunging from the high cliff of the stage.

In a terrific panic, the audience members of the front row screamed as Kuroo hauled the young man round his waist and thrust him over his aching shoulder. Thunderous cries of the riotous crowd emerged with their thoughts out of the theatre and into an unwelcome nightfall.

 

His voice hoarse, Kuroo said, “I can’t keep coming after you.”

Akaashi paused in the relentless pummeling of his fists against Kuroo’s back. “Then stop.”

Smirking, Kuroo gasped out a trembling breath. His knees shaking, he bent beneath a barren tree, branches glittering with a ripening malice in the forbidding moonlight.

“You tugged on my gun the first damn second I held you in my arms. If we’d been trapped in any godforsaken relic other than that theatre, you would’ve pulled that trigger.”

Frozen, his fist whitened, Akaashi’s head bowed. “If you only knew the half of what I would give to prove you wrong, Tetsurou.”

“You’re right. I’ve got nothin’. But that’s about all you’ve got to your name. Or do I misremember you?”

Sighing, Akaashi slumped in the wobbling cradle of Kuroo’s arms. His hands wandered with a gentle diligence down Akaashi’s shoulders, wrestling the kinks out of a sleek pale green fabric.

“They dress you well.”

He heard the smile in Akaashi’s voice. “Not out of any godly benevolence, mind you.”

“Oh, I gleaned that much.”

They’d taken off at a stumbling run at the beginning, a pack of the more adventurous servants storming in their wake. But they’d lost their resolve when they understood Kuroo abstained from any form of negotiation.

No one minded them much near the gambling hall. The regulars smoked and shot up in the same quiet entryway with the musty piles of lumber and driftwood beside the rubbish heap. Kuroo trod over a young woman wrapped in a costly mink coat with a punctured vein bleeding from her arm. Nearby, a friend in black school clothes scratched at his scrawny arm with a mindless determination, shaking from a terror beyond the chill. His remaining teeth shook from blackened gums. Kuroo suspected that with one sharp smack to the back of the head, they’d all fall out.

“Help her, damn you,” he said, wrenching himself around to corner the boy.

Slowly, Akaashi shook his head, and they walked on.

They trudged past the usual chattering men in slick suit jackets stalking the foyer, sparing Kuroo a perfunctory nod as they did. The scent of copious smoke, evanescent above their heads, swirled against the dark ceiling, sputtering light bulbs spasming in their eyes, their glow a florid crimson. Along the wide corridor, shadows flitted past the sliding doors, studiously maneuvering through the seated gamblers placing their bets. This establishment had been born of the Taisho era. History enclosed the rotting capsule with a corrupting hold.

Some imports found a home in the furthest dens of the hall. Kuroo often received the wicked surprise of tripping over an opium addict, on their way out of the flower-smoke room, their face grey and their skin a pinched parchment. He tried not to study them for too long, knowing he would soon imagine Akaashi with prematurely greying hair, perpetually weeping, his gums bleeding as his nose ran through cracked fingernails. He’d kept Akaashi from exploring the outer confines of the hall with evasive warnings, yet all who knew him understood what might befall the son of a bitch who laughed at the young man wandering in.

Yet, Akaashi had been the one to tell him of the Whangpoo River, Shanghai’s bloody field, the dumping ground for opium ghosts mandated by their government. Opium addicts had shoveled bodies together before adding themselves to the pile and meeting their ends in the black rain of the river.

Kuroo suppressed a desperate craving to plume the annals of Akaashi’s mind, but the young man was mysterious by nature. A bit of intelligence over a meandering length of time sweetened the treat. Or so Kuroo fondly reasoned with himself, up at night with his thoughts, smoking in the quiet of his bedroom.

They entered through the sliding door nearest the opium den, some of the men turning to chuckle at Kuroo’s beloved acquisition. Dressed as he was in the formal attire of the Taisho era, Akaashi carried with him something of an anachronistic attachment. He might have pieced himself out of an old entertainer’s portrait, greying and painted, on the point of vanishing, an unspeakable beauty unmatched in his austere, faraway gaze. Kuroo smoothed one hand down the back of the young man’s head, taming the tangles matted in his dark curls. His hair had grown since they’d been together last.

“Where’s Koutarou?” Akaashi said lightly.

A silence hushed over the hall.

“Tetsurou,” he said, sharper now, “where is he?”

Kuroo closed his eyes. “Your benefactor’s dead.”

With the rapidity of a pas de deux, so expertly danced that no amount of critique improved upon the movement, Akaashi uprooted the gun from the lining of Kuroo’s coat and aimed for his head.

“You fucking find him,” he said, his voice ravaged, “or so help me God, I am become your Angel of Hell.”


End file.
